The Choice of Life Part 21

I shall never forget his look, the superb animal look, brilliant, glowing and empty as a ball-room deserted by the dancers, the superb, outspoken look that accompanies the gift of life and seems to flee its mystery at the moment when it approaches.

He stammered a few tender words. His voice thrilled me. It was grave and clear as a bronze and silver bell. It rang true, for the most ephemeral desire is not false. I knew, by the sense of his words, that Rose had not yet given herself.

Sullenly and as though annoyed by the soft words, she brought the dark stuff of her bodice over her white bosom. To the young man it was like a cloud pa.s.sing over the sky; and, whether or not because the girl's resistance exasperated him, he suddenly pressed her to him, sought her lips and made her bend for a moment under the violence of his embrace.

But, with an abrupt movement, with a sort of vindictive rage, she succeeded in releasing herself.

Then I fled from the house.

2

I did not recover myself until I was on the quay outside and felt the cold night-air against my face. My skirt was trailing on the ground; my hands made no movement to hold it up.

With my disgust and resentment there was mingled a vague feeling of remorse. Was it not I who had taught the girl the shamelessness that admits desire and the prudence that refuses to submit to it? Had I not wished for her, above all other treasures, the power of judging, appreciating, choosing?

Yes, but when I had talked of choosing, I had never imagined that the choice could be made in cold blood! So far from that, it had seemed to me that no more dangerous or painful experience could visit a woman's heart. The victory of mind over instinct and of will over desire is the price of a hideous, abnormal struggle opposed to the very law of our nature. A sad victory baptised with tears, a sacred preparation for the n.o.ble defeat that is to crown a woman's life!

Besides, it was not her refusal that revolted me, for we cannot judge an action of which we do not know the reasons; it was her demeanour, her horrible indifference. The ugliness of the scene would not have offended me, I reflected, if the woman had been in any way troubled by it; if I had seen her resist her own desire or at least deplore that which she was unable to share; if I had seen her struggle for a sentiment or suffer for an idea, however absurd or wild! But Rose had had neither tears nor compa.s.sion; and the blind instinct that always prompts us to give our lives had not tempted her.

I continued to see that face of marble. I heard those impa.s.sive words. I pictured that body which felt no thrill, that mouth which abandoned itself without giving itself. No, I had never taught her anything of that kind; for, however light the pain which we cause and whatever its nature, we are forgiven only if our own heart feels a deeper wound. I did not understand her conduct. What had prompted it? To what chains of weakness had her soul stealthily attached itself, that soul which I had jealously protected against all principles and prejudices? What secret limits had she a.s.signed herself despite my watchful care to give her none?

I felt grieved and disappointed; and yet ... and yet I walked along with a certain gladness in my step. The tears trembling on my lashes were not tears of helplessness, but of a too-insistent energy, for they came above all from my overwrought nerves. My mind saw clear and rent my remorse like a superfluous veil.

No, I was not responsible! Our thought, once expressed, no longer belongs to us. Whether it leave us when scarce ripe, because an accident has gathered it, or whether it fall in its season, like the leaf falling from the tree, we know nothing of what it will become; and it is at once the wretchedness and the greatness of human thought to be subjected to the infinite forms of every mind and of every existence.

I walked for a long time without heeding the hour. The sky was clear and the stars glowed in its depths like live things; in the distance, the Trocadero decked the night with brilliants.

And, little by little, hope returned to me. I was persuaded that over there, in the little room which my care had provided for Rose, love would yet be the conqueror. She would awaken under those kisses. My Roseline should yet know pa.s.sion and rapture. Love would triumph. It would do what I had been unable to do, it would breathe life into beauty! And, in the dead stillness, I kept hearing the kisses falling, falling heavily, like the first drops of a storm.

CHAPTER XI

1

We are talking like old friends, he and I, in the little white bedroom.

Through the two curtains of the window high up in the wall a great ray of sunshine falls, a column of dancing light that dies on the table between us. I sit drumming absent-mindedly with my fingers in the shimmering motes. He looks at me and I feel no need to speak or to turn my head. The novelty of his presence makes no impression on me beyond a feeling of surprise that I do not find it strange. When by chance we do not hold the same view, the difference of opinion lasts only long enough to shift the thought which we are considering, even as one shifts an object to see its different aspects one after the other.

I came to the boarding-house this morning to see Rose. Her room was empty. I was on the point of going, when the young man pa.s.sed. He recognised me, doubtless from the portraits which Rose had shown him; and he came up to me of his own accord. His greeting was frank and natural. There were breadth and s.p.a.ciousness in his eyes and his smile as well as in his manner. To justify my friendly interest, I pretended to have heard about him from Rose as he himself had heard about me: that is to say, with the most circ.u.mstantial details regarding position, occupations and all the externals of life. He did not therefore enter into explanations about things of which I was ignorant and we at once began to talk without any formality.

What a strange and delightful sensation it was! I remembered all that I had noticed about him the night before; I knew his character from admiring its gentleness and patience under the supreme test of unrequited love, of desire that awakened no response. And he was now talking to me from the very depths of his soul, while I knew nothing of who or what he was, nor of what he was doing here. I was really seeing him from the inside, as we see ourselves behind the scenes of our own existence, without ever knowing exactly the spectacle which we present to others. I was observing the inner working of his life before I had seen the outward presentment.

Speaking to me of his profession, he told me, with a smile, how little importance he attached to his painting:

"It is only a favourable pretext for the life I have chosen. As you know, my greatest pa.s.sion is nature; and I cannot but like the work which trained my eyes to a clearer vision and my nerves to a finer response."

He told me of the years which he had wasted in seeking in the customary amus.e.m.e.nts the joys which are ordinarily found there. He told me of the life of luxury and idleness which he had led until the day came when adverse fate reduced him to living on the income from a small estate which he owned in the country: a thrice-fortunate day, he added, for from that moment he had understood that he was made for solitude, meditation and all the quiet pleasures of nature. Then he enthusiastically described to me the peaceful charm of his little house and he employed the words of a lover to extol the charm of his willow-swept river and the wonders of his flowers and bees.

2

Then I wanted to know what he thought of Rose. He judged her not inaccurately; but, with a lover's partiality, he applied the words balance, gentleness, equanimity to qualities which one day, when the scales had fallen from his eyes, he would call lack of heart and feeling. Deep-seated differences, perhaps, but yet not of a nature to affect the very sound principles that ensured his tranquillity.

He had no illusions as to the quality of her mind. But to him, as to most men, a woman's intellectual value was but a relative factor; and he did not pause to estimate it with any attempt at accuracy, preferring to repeat:

"She will not disturb the silence of my life; and her beauty will adorn it marvellously."

He had a way of speaking which I liked. He knew how to refine his words by means of his expression. If they were very positive, his voice would hesitate; if too grave, a faint smile would lighten their sombreness. If he spoke ironically, his boyish eyes softened any touch of bitterness in the wisdom of the satirist.

I did not like to think that the success of his wooing would mean the end of his labours. Rose would never become the independent, perfect woman of my dreams, capable of preserving her personal life in the midst of love and in all circ.u.mstances. Alas, my ambition had soared too high! Henceforth, I must wish nothing better for her than this purely ornamental fate.

"Do you love her?" I asked.

"I was taken captive at once by her beauty," he answered. "She objected that this sudden love must be an illusion; and I tried for a time to think the same. But, before long, suffering taught me the sincerity of my love. I dare not say whether it is senseless or right or usual; but, as long as a feeling gives us nothing but joy, we are unable to recognise it, we doubt it, we smile at it as a light and fleeting thing.

Let anguish come, however, with tears and dread; and it is as though the seal of reality were placed on our heart. Then we believe in our love."

I repeated, pensively and happily:

"Do you really love her?"

"Yes, I can say so honestly."

He hesitated a little and, speaking very slowly, as though picking his words from amid his memories, said:

"When we are sincere, we are bound to confess that the love which encircles all the movements of our body follows the movements of its strength or its weakness equally. It has its hours of exasperation, it is sometimes a tide that rises and floods everything: the past, the present, the future, the will, the spirit, the flesh. Then all becomes peaceful; the waves subside and we think that we love no more. We do love, however, but with a more detached joy. We have stepped outside love, as it were, and we contemplate its extent."

My breath came quickly and my hands, clasped on the table, were pressed close together. My heart was bursting with gladness for my Roseline. He saw my emotion and questioned me with deeper interest.

I replied without hesitation:

"I am happy in this love which comes to Rose so simply and candidly."

He pressed my hand as he said:

"Sometimes, on reading certain pa.s.sages in your letters, I used to fear that you might be opposed to my intentions...."

I began to laugh:

"Yes, you will have read fine views concerning independence; and a tirade against the women who surrender too easily; and any number of things more or less contrary to your hopes. But do you not agree with me that our principles are at their soundest when they are least rigid and that our n.o.blest convictions are those of which we see both sides at once? Woman even more than man must not be afraid of handling her morality a little roughly when occasion demands it, just as she sometimes ruffles her laces for the pleasure of the eyes, easily and naturally and without attaching too much importance to the matter."

3

He listens to my words as I listen to his, with surprised delight. We feel as if we were playing with the same thought, for it flashes from one life to the other without undergoing any alteration.

In point of fact, the human beings whom we see for the first time are not always new to us. True, we have never seen each other before, but our sympathies, our enthusiasms, inasmuch as they are common to both of us, have met more than once; and, now that we are talking, the form of our thoughts also corresponds, for, without intending it, we often look at the most abstract things objectively, because he is a painter and I a woman.